Washington Football: Is Nick Holt the Right Man to Lead the Defense?

When a team suffers back-to-back embarrassing, blowout losses, then something or someone is to blame.

The entire Washington team has been abominable at certain stretches this season and certainly in the past two weeks. The offensive issues can be traced to shaky QB play, questionable play-calling, dropped passes, and a weak offensive line. But I can excuse those issues because I see promise for the future–even though Jake Locker has only four games left (at best) in his Washington career. As I’ve said before, I believe in Steve Sarkisian’s ability as a head coach and an offensive play-caller. He has a blueprint for success and aside from some playcalling quibbles that I have with him, I believe he’s making the right decisions for the program (recruiting, culture, competition, etc.). As odd as it is to say it, stylistically, Nick Montana might be a better fight for Sarkisian’s offensive philosophy than Jake Locker is, even though Locker is big and strong with a huge arm.

My biggest complaint about Sarkisian has nothing to do with his day-to-day duties at all, but rather has to do with the bed he made when he put his faith in Defensive Coordinator, Nick Holt.

I, along with most people, thought Holt was a great hire even if the only thing I knew about him was that he came from the USC system and when he spoke, he was passionate and energetic. The fact that he reminded me of Randy “Macho Man” Savage was a bonus. But now that I’ve seen one and two-thirds of a season of defense, I am no longer confident that Holt is the right guy to lead the defense.

I am aware of the double standard. I’m giving Sarkisian a longer rope than I am giving Holt and I am not allowing Holt the benefit of the doubt with regard to the defensive talent that Washington currently has, but the issues that I see with the defense go beyond the dearth of defensive talent.

Perhaps this is all coming up because Holt signed a one-year contract extension through 2012 earlier in October. His original contract was three years for $2.1M which ran from 2009, 2010, and 2011.

Then Harbaugh referenced Pete Carroll, Lane Kiffin, Steve Sarkisian and the UW head coach’s defensive coordinator, Nick Holt, and said, “What are you guys, 5-1, 6-1 against that group (in his four-year tenure)? That’s the highest-paid coaching staff around!”

… also spurred my desire to comment on Holt.

When I heard contract-extension news, I thought what many people thought. “Why?” Have you seen any indication that what Holt is doing as the defensive coordinator warrants an extension? I’m not saying that the guy should get fired, not yet anyway, but what is the rush to extend his contract? Is he in demand? Is there an athletic director anywhere that is chatting up Holt’s agent to offer him a head coaching job? The guy is making around 700k a year as an assistant coach. He’s not getting that deal anywhere else in the country, and I seriously doubt that anyone is offering him a job to run their program, much less their defense. So what’s the reason?

Having exhausted my thinking, I turned to a former Pac-10 receiver who has watched Washington extensively these past two years (no, he’s not a former Husky or Coug). This guy has some pretty strong opinions on Holt, many of which I’m sure are shared by Washington fans. He views Holt as a coach who appears to be in over his head.

While Holt may be decent at having an initial defensive gameplan, he severely lacks any ability to adjust or counteract anything that happens during a game. As an example of this lack of ability, look no further than the Stanford game. It appears that Stanford’s receivers ran the same routes the entire game (outs and comebacks), and yet none of the plays were stopped. Further, Stanford may have run 15 plays all game long. When an offensive coordinator can dial up the same plays over and over and over, it’s a pretty good indication that the defense is either completely outmanned (physically) or the coaches are completely outclassed. And, in fairness, I’d say both are in play at the moment.

But the fact remains that Holt is unable (or unwilling?) to adjust to the game as it unfolds. We see the results of that during the colossal blowouts. Sure, personnel plays a role, but when the same thing happens time after time in a game, that’s not personnel, that’s coaching.

We busted a couple things early – first third-and-2, we didn’t do what we were supposed to do on the quarterback little read zone, and got a touchdown. After that, we kind of scrambled and stuff like that – stuff we need to clean up. We have guys that are supposed to be on the quarterback on that call, and just not doing what they’re supposed to be doing.’

This is a very disappointing quote as it sounds almost exactly like something Tyrone Willingham would say. He put the blame on the players for “not doing what they’re supposed to be doing.” This is classic, “Hey, it’s not my fault” language. Since I am not standing next to Holt during the game, I don’t know how much of a teacher he is, but what I do see, and what the former receiver I spoke to sees, is a lot of yelling and not a lot of true communication.

Is Holt giving his defensive players the floor to tell him what they are seeing? Or is he just screaming at them for not making a play? Look, there is nothing wrong with getting into a player’s mug for doing something wrong and demanding that he correct it (in fact, it’s necessary a lot of the time), but unfortunately it looks like that’s all Holt does–a lot of demanding and not a lot of listening. He is nowhere near a calming influence on the sidelines and gives the impression that he’s upset and panicking. Not a good message to send.

If he was communicating with his players, then you would see far fewer complete and total blown assignments. I don’t care how tough a player is, if he consistently gets chewed out and feels like he’s not being listened to (or doesn’t even have a venue in which to voice his opinion) then that player is not going to respond well and he’s going to play poorly. In addition to not being in the right place at the right time (scheme/coaching problems) he may not put forth the effort because he’s pissed and has a bad attitude. These players are humans, not robots, and they react accordingly.

The receiver that I spoke to said that when he was playing his coaching staff would get pissed, sure, but they would also ask the players what they are seeing on the field and what they can do to correct things that are going poorly. I don’t know that Holt is doing this–he may be and we are just not seeing it. But here are two good indicators of a defensive coach being unable to adjust to in-game situations. (1) Consistent blown assignments and (2) an offensive running the exact same plays at the end of a game that they ran at the beginning of the game. Does that sound familiar?

Maybe Holt would be a good position coach and clearly is a passionate guy, which could work really well with some kids in recruiting, but his style and scheme are not working and I’m not sure if talent level will change much of that. We could be way off base here and the players may just love Holt, but sometimes you need to step back to see what you’re doing isn’t working, and anyone who is watching this defense objectively can see that it isn’t working.